3 ms·

It depends on whether the work is concave or convex. Concave means that the difference between excellence and mediocrity is smaller than that between mediocrity

It depends on whether the work is concave or convex. Concave means that the difference between excellence and mediocrity is smaller than that between mediocrity and failure. It applies to commodity work where the best performers might be 1.2-1.4 times as effective as average ones. There's no such thing as a "10x factory worker". Convex work is where the difference between excellence and mediocrity is huge, but mediocrity and failure aren't far apart. If you're doing concave work, command-and-control works. Reduce defects in your factory process, fire the slackers, reduce risk. If you're doing convex work, then you need the Valve/Github approach because traditional management will drive excellence away. Wal-Mart excels in a commodity domain. Valve and Github are in software, and software is convex. More on concave vs. convex: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/the-end-of-management/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/the-end-of-ma...

rgbrenner 14y ago
Nice try at explaining it. But Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, IBM, HP, Intel, AMD, Nvidia -- not a single one of these is flat. Valve and GitHub are TINY companies in comparison.
- yuhong 14y ago
  This does not mean they should be, though some of them are hardware companies too.
  - rgbrenner 14y ago
    Flat works at the small size of GitHub and Valve. But I can't think of a single large company that is flat. Where is the evidence that a flat structure even works at the size of these companies? Just so the comparison is clear: Microsoft: 94000 employees [0] GitHub: 140 [1] In other words, Microsoft is 670x larger. Or GitHub is 0.15% of MS's size. [0] http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/inside_ms.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/inside_ms.aspx [1] http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/28/github-has-big-dreams-for-open-source-software-and-more/ http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/28/github-has-big-drea...
    - SatvikBeri 14y ago
      Gore & Associates is the major counterexample-flat structure, 9,000 employees: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gore_and_Associates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gore_and_Associates
    - michaelochurch 14y ago
      You need coordination and guidance at 94,000 people. You can't have it be totally "flat"; I agree. You need some administration and some conceptual structure and hierarchy is the way humans think. You don't, however, need managerial extortionists who won't let people seek independent credibility, choose their own projects and teams, or collaborate extra-hierarchically.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  Google's the one I have the most experience with, and there's some excellent work going on there, but there's no longer a company-wide culture of excellence, and the reason is the injection of traditional HR and managerial behaviors: "calibration score" witch hunts, manager-as-SPOF, stack ranking. If you're a Real Googler, you're above the fray with regard to a lot of that shit, and you can move to projects as you wish. Hell, Steve Yegge quit his project at Oscon and wasn't fired. He moved to a different project. The culture of excellence that exists at Google is for Real Googlers. If you're a Real Googler, it's an awesome place and you can get some really great work done there. If you're not, you're wasting your time and career. I'm sure it's wonderful if you're already great. It's not the best place for people like me who are good and trying to become great. Valve is now the cultural leader, and it will be able to scale with open allocation. Why? Because open allocation is a natural fit for technology. I don't think you can grow at 300% per year and retain OA, but I see absolutely no upper limit on the number of people who can coexist in such a regime. What makes scaling hard is the deadline factor: having to grow quickly. It's easy if you can control the pace, which Valve (being privately funded, not a get-big-or-die VC gambit) can. OA seems the anomaly because we're used to these military-inspired corporate megaliths, but the reality is that closed-allocation is the oddity. A caste of people whose only job is to delegate work? Top-down internal headcount limitations set according to political fights, arbitrated by people who barely understand the day-to-day of the company? Does this sound like an intrinsic necessity, or self-serving parasitism centered around control of the division of labor? I know where I'd put my money on that one.
  - yuhong 14y ago
    On Google, from http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/01/03/google-larry-page/ http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/01/03/google-larry-page/ (HN thread at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5002483 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5002483): "There is no question the once-open Googleplex has become more compartmentalized. Areas where the Google+ and Android teams work suddenly began to require special badges. Page's own suite is on the top floor of the Google+ building."
  - sjg007 14y ago
    Open allocation essentially mirrors open source software projects we see in public. I totally agree that open allocation is the way to go. Even software on a company's critical path will attract new people to work on it, mostly to learn and develop new skills. That frees the original super star devs to move on to new projects.

rgbrenner 14y ago

Nice try at explaining it. But Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, IBM, HP, Intel, AMD, Nvidia -- not a single one of these is flat. Valve and GitHub are TINY companies in comparison.

yuhong 14y ago
This does not mean they should be, though some of them are hardware companies too.
- rgbrenner 14y ago
  Flat works at the small size of GitHub and Valve. But I can't think of a single large company that is flat. Where is the evidence that a flat structure even works at the size of these companies? Just so the comparison is clear: Microsoft: 94000 employees [0] GitHub: 140 [1] In other words, Microsoft is 670x larger. Or GitHub is 0.15% of MS's size. [0] http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/inside_ms.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/inside_ms.aspx [1] http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/28/github-has-big-dreams-for-open-source-software-and-more/ http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/28/github-has-big-drea...
  - SatvikBeri 14y ago
    Gore & Associates is the major counterexample-flat structure, 9,000 employees: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gore_and_Associates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gore_and_Associates
  - michaelochurch 14y ago
    You need coordination and guidance at 94,000 people. You can't have it be totally "flat"; I agree. You need some administration and some conceptual structure and hierarchy is the way humans think. You don't, however, need managerial extortionists who won't let people seek independent credibility, choose their own projects and teams, or collaborate extra-hierarchically.
michaelochurch 14y ago
Google's the one I have the most experience with, and there's some excellent work going on there, but there's no longer a company-wide culture of excellence, and the reason is the injection of traditional HR and managerial behaviors: "calibration score" witch hunts, manager-as-SPOF, stack ranking. If you're a Real Googler, you're above the fray with regard to a lot of that shit, and you can move to projects as you wish. Hell, Steve Yegge quit his project at Oscon and wasn't fired. He moved to a different project. The culture of excellence that exists at Google is for Real Googlers. If you're a Real Googler, it's an awesome place and you can get some really great work done there. If you're not, you're wasting your time and career. I'm sure it's wonderful if you're already great. It's not the best place for people like me who are good and trying to become great. Valve is now the cultural leader, and it will be able to scale with open allocation. Why? Because open allocation is a natural fit for technology. I don't think you can grow at 300% per year and retain OA, but I see absolutely no upper limit on the number of people who can coexist in such a regime. What makes scaling hard is the deadline factor: having to grow quickly. It's easy if you can control the pace, which Valve (being privately funded, not a get-big-or-die VC gambit) can. OA seems the anomaly because we're used to these military-inspired corporate megaliths, but the reality is that closed-allocation is the oddity. A caste of people whose only job is to delegate work? Top-down internal headcount limitations set according to political fights, arbitrated by people who barely understand the day-to-day of the company? Does this sound like an intrinsic necessity, or self-serving parasitism centered around control of the division of labor? I know where I'd put my money on that one.
- yuhong 14y ago
  On Google, from http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/01/03/google-larry-page/ http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/01/03/google-larry-page/ (HN thread at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5002483 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5002483): "There is no question the once-open Googleplex has become more compartmentalized. Areas where the Google+ and Android teams work suddenly began to require special badges. Page's own suite is on the top floor of the Google+ building."
- sjg007 14y ago
  Open allocation essentially mirrors open source software projects we see in public. I totally agree that open allocation is the way to go. Even software on a company's critical path will attract new people to work on it, mostly to learn and develop new skills. That frees the original super star devs to move on to new projects.